Mobilizing Metaphor: Considering Complexities, Contradictions, and Contexts in Adolescent Girls’ and Young Women’s Sexual Agency

Latina Girls, Sexual Agency, and the Contradictions of Neoliberalism

“…At the heart of these anxieties and their corresponding debates are social norms about the acceptability of teen sex (Mollborn and Sennott 2014). In addition to the persistence of a (hetero)sexist sexual double standard that assumes all young people are heterosexual and posits distinct and unequal gendered norms of heterosexuality, with teenage boys expected and encouraged to be sexual beings while teenage girls are not (Crawford and Popp 2003;D'Emilio and Freedman 1988;Tolman et al 2015), scholars have mapped its co-construction with discourses of race and class (Bay-Cheng 2015a;Bettie 2014;Elliott 2014;Erdmans and Black 2015;Fields 2008;Fine 1988;Fine andMcClelland 2006, 2007;García 2012;Harris 2004;Schalet et al 2014). Concerns over the perceived reproduction of poverty in lowincome communities of color through practices of non-marital childbearing among adolescents and young adults first emerged in the 1970s and persist today (Geronimus 1997(Geronimus , 2003Luker 1996;Mollborn and Jacobs 2012;Pillow 2004).…”

“…The scholarship on adolescent girls' sexual subjectivity treats sexual agency as one aspect of sexual subjectivity, which is typically conceptualized as making decisions or acting in ways that take into account on one's own embodied sexual feelings, including choosing not to act on those feelings (Tolman et al 2015). While researchers have found that among some adolescent girls who are heterosexually active, sex is often described as something that Bjust happened,^in-dicating an absence of sexual agency (Luker 1975;Tolman 2002), scholars have also attended to the myriad ways teenage girls assert sexual agency by examining their narratives of sexual feelings, behavior, and relationships ( Albanesi 2010;Bay-Cheng and Fava 2014;Burns et al 2011;García 2012;Maxwell and Aggleton 2010;Schalet et al 2003;Schalet 2010).…”

“…These structural contexts include unequal power relations between men and women within heterosexual intimate relationships and stigma in the form of classed and racialized gender stereotypes that construct girls of color and poor and working-class girls as hypersexual and irresponsible-as inherently Bat-risk^ (Armstrong et al 2014;Bay-Cheng 2015a;Bettie 2014;Chavez 2004;Cheng et al 2014;García 2012;Mann 2013). Such dynamics raise questions about whether or not girls who Bare always already presumed to be the (failed) embodiment of adolescent girls' sexuality^are able to exercise what Tolman et al (2015) refer to as Bembodied sexual agency^at all or to what extent such girls internalize neoliberal messages about how to express and manage their sexualities. While Bay-Cheng (2015a) convincingly demonstrates the emerging hegemony of neoliberal sexual agency as a sexual script and its power to regulate how girls' sexualities are appraised and held accountable to social norms, questions remain about how Latina girls in particular express sexual agency in relation to this seemingly now-dominant discourse.…”

“…While Bay-Cheng (2015a) convincingly demonstrates the emerging hegemony of neoliberal sexual agency as a sexual script and its power to regulate how girls' sexualities are appraised and held accountable to social norms, questions remain about how Latina girls in particular express sexual agency in relation to this seemingly now-dominant discourse. As Tolman et al (2015) note, further empirical examination of how girls marginalized at the intersections of gender, race, and class articulate their sexual subjectivities, including assertions of sexual agency, is needed.…”

“…Despite these important theoretical and empirical advances in the critical literature on Latina girls' sexualities, our understanding of how Latina girls negotiate dominant discourses and practices of heterosexuality in the context of their everyday lives could benefit from further attention, especially in light of recent debates about the extent to which neoliberalism as a dominant ideology may or may not be influencing how adolescent girls and young women articulate sexual agency (Abbott and Dalla 2008;Bay-Cheng 2015b;García 2012;Tolman et al 2015). What follows enhances our understanding of how Latina teenagers construct their sexual subjectivities through multiple discourses of sexual agency, including neoliberal, relational, and absent forms.…”